High Noon for the Israel Lobby

At this writing, it is Friday night in Geneva, and there are press rumors that Iran and the P5+1 have overcome most but not all of the remaining major sticking points in negotiating a preliminary deal. According to latest reports, Secretary of State Kerry may be Geneva bound, which he wouldn’t be if the negotiations weren’t on the cusp. So let’s assume a preliminary deal is achieved: Iran will get some very minimal sanctions relief in return for essentially freezing its nuclear program for several months while a more substantive deal is negotiated. Presumably the parties will have found a way to split the difference, in some diplomatically ambiguous way, on Iran’s “right” to enrich uranium. In any case, any deal will acknowledge that Iran has the capacity to enrich uranium to non-weapons levels and will continue to do so, albeit under strict supervision and inspection. I believe such a deal would be in the interest of the United States and all oil consumers, because otherwise Iran is on track to develop a bomb fairly quickly if it wants, and no one really thinks that a war to stop that would solve the problem in any constructive way. It is in Israel’s interest too, an opinion Israeli military intelligence services have been leaking (contradicting the alarmist rhetoric of the Netanyahu government.)

Of course there is some question whether the newly elected Rouhani goverment will be allowed, by Iran’s hard liners, to cut such a deal which clearly puts Iran under oath to not develop nuclear weapons and subjects its facilities to all kinds of inspections. But there are no Iran experts to my knowledge who think that the new government doesn’t have the authority to really negotiate. A greater question is whether Congress will allow the Obama administration to negotiate such a deal. And that is where things get interesting.

Right now, there is every indication that Congress will try to mobilize to stop a deal. One close Congress watcher tallied up four Senate amendments already in the pipeline designed to limit Secretary Kerry’s negotiating flexibility, promise to support Israel’s effort to address “an existential Iranian nuclear threat,” support Israeli strikes against the “grave threat” posed by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles, and generally demand that Iran be “nuclear free.” More anti-diplomacy amendments are promised when the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving holiday.

The Senate’s hatred of Iran diplomacy is not really a mystery. Tom Friedman discussed it in a recent column, writing

[N]ever have I seen more lawmakers—Democrats and Republicans—more willing to take Israel’s side against their own president’s. I’m certain this comes less from any careful consideration of the facts and more from a growing tendency by many American lawmakers to do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations.

Shortly after the column appeared, two reporters got on an invitation-only conference call with Senator Mark Kirk, where the senator bragged to prospective donors how he coordinated legislative with AIPAC’s director Howard Kohr. Nevertheless, mention of the Israel lobby’s outsized influence remains single greatest taboo in American political life, and Friedman was instantly excoriated with accusations of anti-semitism from Elliott Abrams and Jennifer Rubin. But just as it gradually became permissible to claim the earth moved around the sun, the dangers to one’s professional life from talking about the Israel lobby’s influence are gradually but inexorably ebbing. Tom Friedman is pretty much immune, many times over: he is very supportive of a liberal Israel, has written a good book about the Middle East (and several others), he is tremendously wealthy, his stature in the world of opinion journalism exceeds that of Jennifer Rubin and Elliott Abrams many many times over.

Uri Avnery, the great Israeli activist and writer, explores the Netanyahu-Obama standoff here. He brings up Steve Walt and John Mearsheimer’s instant classic The Israel Lobby, whose main arguments are now being acted out on the national stage. (On a side note, Avnery states that The Israel Lobby argues that Capitol Hill is “Israeli-occupied territory”, much like Nablus and Ramallah. The book definitely does not claim that, and is on this and other questions far more nuanced. But I’m reminded of the person who did say it, as political talk show hyperbole, on The McLaughlin Group. It was of course Pat Buchanan, in 1990. He later told me that he had heard a Palestinian speaker use the line, thought it clever and filed it away, but believed it too hot to ever use himself. Then the subject came up on The McLaughlin Group and “It just came flying out.”)

So, on the one hand, you have a president and foreign affairs bureaucracy which wants to explore the possibility of a deal with Iran. On the other you have Israel’s government, which in the shrillest possible terms is shouting NO DEAL. Then you have the American people, who are divided on the matter but whose majorities are telling pollsters that on balance they favor such a deal, in some polls by 2-1 margins, in others somewhat less. And then you have a Congress pushing forward amendments designed to scuttle a deal and tie the president’s hands.

If a preliminary settlement is agreed upon in Geneva, the next six months will be a test of the Israel lobby’s power such as we have never seen. In the early 1980s, President Reagan barely prevailed in a months long face-off with Congress and Israel over whether the United States could sell AWACs, an airborne early warning system, to Saudi Arabia. “Reagan or Begin” was the catchword slogan. And Reagan of course had Boeing and other major arms manufacturers strongly on his side. But in fact, though Israel complained heatedly that this enhancement of Saudi defenses would reduce the “surprise attack” capacities of its air force, its effect on the overall Middle East has been slight.

The stakes of an Iran deal would not be slight. Iran will either be gradually reintegrated into the Middle East state system through diplomacy, or it will be left outside, its nuclear program advancing and belligerence enhanced. This is probably a recipe for war, quite possibly a major war, with consequences difficult to foresee. Put these ingredients together, and what can be foreseen is a political and moral battle in Washington that will make the AWAC’s struggle seem tiny by comparison.

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27 Responses to High Noon for the Israel Lobby

The leak from Israel military intelligence leads me to believe that the Iran issue transcends the security of Israel and has become a power struggle between Obama and US peace forces versus Likud and those in the US who benefit from war. This looks like political Armageddon.

If Friedman is correct that many American lawmakers “do whatever the Israel lobby asks them to do in order to garner Jewish votes and campaign donations,” then why did Congress refuse to back a military strike against Assad, which was supported by AIPAC?

Allowing AIPAC and its ilk to pose as domestic lobbying groups was a big mistake. It is now screaming to be fixed.

How can any sovereign nation permit what its president and people want (and what most relevant foreign policy professionals advise) to be challenged and blocked in its own domestic political process by agents of a foreign power? Get these people out of our government and out of our internal politics, the sooner the better.

The fact that our 16 intelligence agencies and Israel’s military intelligence services refute Bibi’s claims – and this is nothing new – makes it plain as day that Bibi, AIPAC and the neocons are not dealing in reality. Deliberately or otherwise.

Shades of Gulf War II… with the neocons, this is nothing new either. Honestly I can’t tell whether AIPAC really believes their own nonsense, or if they just fear losing power.

It’s hard to imagine the stakes getting any higher for a certain foreign politician, our fifth column, and our own home-grown problem. I expect 24/7 hysteria and at least one false flag operation.

A lot more publicity and transparency about what the military and defense agencies have to say is essential in order to put the fire out. However even our main stream media treats the invented or inflated threat as a real one.

In the meantime our raddled Congress continues to be a tool, a sellout and a disappointment. Once again – this is nothing new either.

I can only hope that a gruoundswell of public opinion in favor of no war (and not increasing home heating oil cost) will trump Aipac. Like what happend about Syria. I believe the American people are fed up with these stupid wars.

I think that less and less Americans are buying the fear mongering nonsense of people like Lindsey Graham, John Bolton and Netanyahu and others. Lets just hope so for everybody’s sake. The only other party that will benefit will be the MIC.

I consider the real threat to be sunni-arab expansionist tendencies. I should very much like to get Netanyahu and Rouhani in one room and persuade them to discuss matters of mutual interest. They might find one item of extremee importance to both their nations.

Don’t forget that the GOP still has the Evangelical wing of the base to consider. They are the firewall of support that neocons depend on to keep the party in line. (The apparent schism between they and the Tea Party isn’t likely much more than one side’s revulsion at Obama, hence the failure to support a strike against Syria.) AIPAC might have the money, but the base is everything for the GOP. (The Democrats have most of their Israel boosters in the Senate.)

Assuming Obama is unable to call off enough Democratic Senators to keep a poison pill amendment from passing, I wonder if he would go as far as to veto the bill it was attached to. Isn’t it the Defense Reauthorization Act? That would be a hell of a bill to veto. On the plus side, the polls suggest he might actually win some praise from the public for doing it.

The interesting question to me is what is the Lobby going to do once Kerry/Obama sign this six-month pact. (Assuming of course they do.)

Seems to me they’ll have a thoughtful decision to make.

Up until now, that is, all their sturm und drang made sense: It was attempting to get the U.S. to drive the hardest bargain possible.

Okay, fine. But what about after this deal gets signed?

Of course there’ll be a reason to once again try to get the U.S. to drive the hardest bargain possible, if their minimal bargain of not granting Iran any enrichment rights at all is still possible.

But once this first one is signed does it truly make sense to either deny Obama the ability to remove some sanctions or add new ones they way some of their Congressional shills seem to be talking?

I dunno: Refuse to remove sanctions or add new ones and poof might go the P5+1 coalition, and poof might go *their* sanctions, which I understand are the ones especially biting Iran.

That doesn’t seem smart, even if it does seem to fit their preferred modus operandi of just simple mindless aggressiveness in all things 24/7.

I suppose they might say so what, at the point that the int’l sanctions regime collapses the U.S. will then *have* to attack Iran, but look at the position they’d then be putting the U.S. in and Obama. Attacking without a shred of int’l support?

Hasn’t Obama already shown (in Syria if nowhere else) he’s not that sort of guy and won’t be pushed there?

Going to be very interesting what tactic is used if this interim agreement is signed. You’d think it would be an issue for Israel and its Lobby to ponder if they don’t want a backfire—just like they got with Syria.

Will Israel ever try to learn making peace, or do its extremist leaders now believe in eternal war and enmity with all non-Jews within it and surrounding it, forever and ever?
How has it come to be that the defining characteristic of Israel’s political mental state, instead of the great liberal gift given in Jewish diaspora to the world, is now extreme xenophobia? We do the memory of the past persecuted and the future beneficial circumstances of world Jewry no favors by capitulating and caving to the destructive, shortsighted, belligerent paranoia of temporary Israeli politicians. Sometimes, tough love of a friend means being tough enough to say “NO” to the irrational.

Supporting AIPAC and Netanyahu against a deal with Iran makes sense ONLY if members of the US Congress who do so DIDN’T just sit back and sip their lattes when the REAL NUTS in North Korea threatened South Korea with a nuclear attack as recently as last April.

Our entire political class , including the hawks, somehow manage to downplay bluster from a nuclear power (N.K.) whose leaders seem to have been chosen from a bunch of discarded Disney characters, and at the same time, they act as though Iran hasn’t got a single rational person in their leadership.
One thing that Aipac and Netanyahu seem to have totally misread is the reaction of Americans when Bumbling Barry almost stumbled his way into an attack on Syria. Only Reverend Hagee and religious lunatics of his ilk are eager to see a confrontation against Iran. Most Americans across the political spectrum have HAD IT with wars in the Middle East.

I purposely listened to as many right-wing talk shows as possible during the Syrian crisis. It was amazing to hear right wing types, who blindly supported George W’s bluster, talk about “attacks on sovereign states” and “no declaration of war from Congress” and “constitutional limits on war powers”. If Bibi thinks those sycophants in the Congress can just “lap dog” their way into a war with Iran, he is going to be in for a surprise.

Your thinking here is flawed as a result of your assumption that the deal will involve a real inspections regime for Iran’s nuclear program. All of the evidence suggests the contrary, that there will be simply cosmetics to suggest some transparency here and there but little else. John Kerry will wave his piece of paper and announce “Peace in Our Time” while Iran continues to try to go nuclear. It’ll simply be a repeat of the North Korea experience of the Clinton administration – except this time we won’t have the excuse of not being able to learn from history.

As can be seen over at the Weekly Standard, where Kristol actually compares Netanyahu with Lincoln, there will be endless opportunities for the lobby to go beyond sane discourse. This is a good thing. Perhaps it will open some eyes.

You will notice that whenever Secretary Kerry testifies before Congress his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry (as in Heinz Foods), sits directly behind him nodding in agreement. Is this to show that Mr. Kerry has a loyal spouse? No. This is a message to Congress that agribusiness is tired of war and wants a more peaceful world to export their crops.

Congress knew Theresa Heinz Kerry before she was Mrs. Kerry. She has been a political force to be reckoned with at the intersection of politics and food for some time. What we are witnessing is the “Godzilla versus Mothra” of US power politics as agribusiness takes on the war-mongering of the military industrial complex and their favorite customers, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hegal from Nebraska is another manifestation of this trend. And President Obama hails from Chicago, the financial center of agribusiness. As you enjoy your meals today be thankful to US agribusiness.

Jason,
You may be right here, but so what? The important thing here is to bring Iran in from the cold, internationally. If that means they retain the capability to build a bomb, then its cheap at the price.
Even if they actually build a bomb, it changes very little. Ever since the Soviets built their first weapon this has been the irony of nuclear arms. You cant use them.
So who cares what they do? Lets allow Iran to be the regional power they have historically been and the war talk will go away.

Excellent, thoughtful article. What it doesn’t highlight sufficiently is that the US and Israel have different goals in dealing with Iran. The US wants to disarm the Iranian nuclear program. Israel wants that, plus it also wants to halt Iran’s funding of Hezbollah and Hamas to stop the fighting on its borders. Israel prefers a war with Iran to solely achieving the US objective. The big question here is whether US policy makers will follow US national interest or be swayed to follow Israel’s.

You still seem to imply Iran is secretly planning on nuclear weapons. That alas is the American mind with its roots in the seventeenth century of witches and hobgoblins across its borders. There is a fatwa on building nuclear weapons in Iran as anti Islam. You would insist fatwas should be taken deadly seriously. Well here is one.